The life of Edmund Hockridge, who has died aged 89, could have provided the storyline for one of the musicals he starred in. Canadian boy who helps his father on the farm is discovered to have a remarkable voice. He is championed by the matrons of Vancouver, "discovered" and after war service happens to arrive in Britain just as West End producers are hunting for a singer to take the lead role in a show brought over from Broadway. In true showbiz tradition, he gets the part.

Hockridge was to play the role of Billy Bigelow in Carousel for more than 1,000 performances, becoming one of the West End's biggest stars of the 1950s. Using his cinematic good looks and powerful voice to the full, he established himself as an enduring television, radio and variety star in Britain.

Edmund James Arthur Hockridge was born in Vancouver in August 1919. When he was old enough to understand biology, he calculated that he had arrived nine months after the armistice and caused blushes by suggesting to his reserved parents that he might have been the product of postwar celebrations. The youngest of four boys, he enjoyed an idyllic boyhood, roaming the Rockies, singing along to Bing Crosby and Nelson Eddy on the wireless.

His ambition to become a singer was boosted when he became an usher for pocket money at Vancouver Auditorium, where he saw Beniamino Gigli, Paul Robeson and other singers of world rank. When his own voice broke, it turned out to be a pure and powerful baritone and a group of citizens arranged for him go to a Vancouver hotel to sing for a visiting opera star.

The verdict was encouraging and soon Hockridge was winning prizes for singing but his ambitions were curtailed by the outbreak of the second world war. Though he joined the Royal Canadian Air Force hoping to become a pilot, nose bleeds at altitude forced him to think again. Posted to Britain, he coupled military PR duties with BBC broadcasts to the troops and appearances with dance bands. While serving in Britain he met a Wren, Eileen Elliott, who worked in Lord Louis Mountbatten's office. They married and had a son, but Hockridge always believed that they had fallen into marriage rather than fallen in love, and by the time he returned to Canada it was clear that the relationship was doomed.

Hockridge had his own radio show in Canada: nonetheless, at the age of 31, he decided to return to Britain. There could not have been a better time to make the move. Stephen Douglass, the American actor playing Billy Bigelow in Carousel, had exhausted his work permit and a new lead man was needed. The role called for an imposing character with stamina and a powerful voice. Someone, as the script says, "as tall and as strong as a tree". Hockridge, at 6ft 1in and, according to one critic, with "looks girls long to encounter on the beach" fitted the bill.

He played the fairground barker Billy more than 1,000 times in London and hundreds of times on the provincial tour. For seven years he was regarded as "London's resident male lead", topping the bill in the first London productions of Guys and Dolls (1953-54), Can-Can (1954-55) and The Pajama Game (1955-56). He became a major recording artist as a result of his success in musicals, having a hit with Hey There, from The Pajama Game. Carousel was also to change Hockridge's personal life. In the cast was a 19-year-old dancer and singer called Jackie Jefferson. He was smitten by her but was still married, and 13 years her senior. The couple chose to keep their affair low-key, eventually marrying after his first wife agreed to a divorce. They moved to Peterborough (where they lived next door to Ernie Wise) and brought up a family.

During his 50-year career Hockridge recorded 11 albums and worked with a dazzling array of old-style stars, including Tommy Cooper, Eartha Kitt, Max Wall, Roy Hudd, Cliff Richard, Billy Dainty, Morecambe and Wise, and Petula Clark. In 1986, aged 67, he partnered the rock singer Suzi Quatro in a London production of Annie Get Your Gun (his seventh musical) and also appeared with Isla St Clair in a provincial production of The Sound of Music (1984).

Hockridge was especially proud to have been top of the cabaret bill when the QE2 made her maiden voyage, in 1969. He loved sport, especially cricket, and had a keen sense of humour and a fund of anecdotes. But most of all he liked to be thought of as a family man who had been fortunate. He used to say: "My Dad told me that you could only control so much in life. After that you needed a bucket full of luck. I got my bucketful."

He is survived by Jackie, their sons Murray and Stephen, a foster son, Clifford, and Ian, his son from his first marriage.

• Edmund James Arthur Hockridge, singer, born 9 August 1919; died 15 March 2009